by Lisa Howorth
“That’s the story,” I said.
Max’s face grew pale. I resumed filling in the hole, and when I was done, Max came over and picked up hunks of dug-up grass and neatly placed them on top. He tamped it all down with his Chucks. Then he said, “I just thought of something. When I was coming over, I saw Rudo in Ivan’s yard. He was barking and scrabbling at the ground in front of the porch. Maybe it was the vinegaroon?”
This got Ivan’s attention. “Oh, no! He might try to eat it!”
Brandishing the shovel, we sped around front, where I saw that the cars at the Goncharoffs’ were gone. But below the porch, there was Rudo, doing exactly what Max described, and, more frightening, the twins were with him, crazed putti dancing and giggling, encouraging his frenzy. Max shouted, “Ivan! Get the twins away! I’ll get Rudo!” Ivan ran to the twins and wrestled them away. Max yelled, “Rudo, NO!” He grabbed Rudo by his collar and dragged him off, holding him at a distance. Ivan screeched at the twins in Spanish, and they ran into the house. Then he and I tentatively approached the spot where Rudo had been digging. There were some loose chunks of concrete walk, but nothing else. “Please don’t let Rudo have eaten him,” Ivan prayed. Using the tip of the shovel, I very slowly lifted a piece of concrete. Nothing. I tried a bigger chunk, levered it up, and jumped back. “Gah! There he is!” The vinegaroon waved his claws at us and poised his whiptail. Before he could spray me, I had the big piece of concrete in my hands and hurled it down on top of him. It landed with a thud on the damp dirt. For a moment we stood silently, relieved about our rescue and the end of the vinegaroon. Then I slowly lifted the chunk again. He was completely crushed, a mass of brittle purple carapace and gluey insides, smelling of vinegar. I scooped him up with the shovel, saying, “We can’t bury him because Wiesie or the dogs might dig him up. I say we burn him.” Ivan took Rudo from Max, and, quietly opening the screen door, pushed him inside. We carried the vinegaroon off to my house.
Down at the stone fireplace at the end of my yard, we made a small pyre with dry leaves and sticks. I shoveled the vinegaroon, our hard-won trophy, onto the pyre and Max lit it. It burned slowly and smokily. Max said, “Too bad you didn’t get a crack at Slutcheon, old buddy.”
Ivan addressed the fire pitifully. “It wasn’t your fault, it was mine. You were just doing your job.”
“Ivan! Ivan!” Beatriz called, running down to us in her uniform. She ran straight to Ivan, throwing herself at him so forcefully that they fell down together. “Ivan! I’m so sorry! I thought about you all day!” Lying on top of him, she began crying. They struggled up, and Beatriz said, “Don’t worry, we’re going to take care of you!” Ivan, embarrassed, gave her a thin smile.
She wiped her eyes and asked, “What are you burning?”
“It’s the vinegaroon,” I said.
Beatriz looked astonished. “Why?”
“We need to tell her everything,” Max said solemnly.
“Well, you can,” I said. “Ivan and I don’t want to hear it again.” Max took Beatriz by the hand, leading her away. They stood together as Max explained our awful secret. Beatriz covered her face, sobbing. Max awkwardly put his arms around her, letting her cry. I’d never seen so much crying in all my eight years.
I said to Ivan, “Gimme your knife.” I took it and swiftly drew the little blade across my wrist. Then Ivan did the same. After a second, drops of blood appeared on our cuts. “You guys come here!” I called to Beatriz and Max. Beatriz was startled when she saw the blood, but I said, “We have to swear on our secret.” Max made his cut, then Beatriz, and we rubbed our wrists on one another’s, our blood mixing inextricably and for all time. It was a rite the boys and I had performed before, only with tiny pricks from fingertips, and not about so enormous a secret. We were trapped in a sticky spiderweb of lies, but it felt better knowing that the four of us were in the web together.
* * *
—
From the house, I brought Band-Aids. Beatriz had to go home. The boys and I went inside and watched more TV—The Mickey Mouse Club. We thought we were too old for it, but who cared. Then Mrs. Friedmann came to collect Max, carrying a warm loaf of challah. She gave Ivan a bosomy hug and said, “Dear Ivan, you don’t belieff zis now, but vun day life vill be goodt again.”
Dimma came from the kitchen. “Ivan, we’ve arranged with your father for you to stay with us the rest of this week. Maria will bring over the things you need, and you two will go back to school in the morning, all right? That might be best until things settle down.”
Ivan said simply, “Thanks.”
“Ivan, sweetheart, things will get better, I promise.”
“Okay,” Ivan said. I knew he didn’t believe any of it.
14
After school a couple days later, Ivan and Max and I went to Blessed Sacrament for a service for Elena. A kind young nun who had done volunteer work with Elena on refugee problems had arranged the service. Josef had had Elena cremated, so there was no casket, just flowers. The Friedmanns, the Montebiancos, and Mr. and Mrs. Shreve were there, although their boys were “under house arrayest,” as Mrs. Shreve put it, because of the cherry-bomb debacle at the Fiesta. Beatriz’s parents let her sit with me and Max and Ivan, and Beatriz kissed Ivan’s cheek. Maria sat in the front row with Josef, weeping quietly. Tim was there, looking very handsome in a blazer and tie. He waved to us miserably. I was surprised not to see Gellert and his family.
I don’t remember much of what took place: some mumbo-jumbo and church songs, a man from the refugee organization said a few words. Before long we were back at my house, where Dimma had offered to host a small wake. The adults drank coffee and a little sherry, talking quietly and nibbling what Dimma had put out—the neighbors had all brought things. None of this was very real to me, and it didn’t seem to have much to do with the Elena we knew. Why weren’t we all drinking Cuba libres, smoking Vogues, laughing, wearing silky kimonos, listening to “The Twelfth of Never”? That would have been a more fitting goodbye for her, as far as I was concerned.
Beatriz and the boys and I went out to our front steps and sat quietly, surrounded by the mournful drone of the cicadas. I thought about us being right where we were, performing at the Fiesta; it had been only days but seemed like weeks.
I noticed Ivan was twiddling a golden ring with three diamonds on his middle finger. “What’s that?” I asked.
“It belonged to her grandmother,” he said. “She gave it to me at the Fiesta. He doesn’t know I have it. I’m gonna keep it forever.”
Beatriz leaned in to see. “It’s so beautiful! Ivan, she’s with the angels, and she’s okay.”
Max retorted, his mouth full of a muffin he’d eaten in one bite, “Shalami, shalami, baloney! Shee’sh gone and ish jusht dusht an’ ashes now.”
Ivan didn’t appear to be paying much attention, but then he said, “There might be angels. We don’t know everything. Maybe people believe in angels so they aren’t scared, and dying doesn’t seem so bad.” He put the ring in his pocket.
“Maybe God is punishing us for…our sins.” Beatriz’s lower lip trembled. “Like the Heist.”
“But why would God punish her?” I asked, still not able to say Elena.
“Maybe God is a moron,” Max said, shocking Beatriz, who cried, “Don’t say that, Max!”
“Everybody gets to think what they want, okay?” I said, putting an end to it.
Then the grown-ups left all at once, saying comforting things to Ivan. Josef cursorily said, “Be good, son,” and patted Ivan’s shoulder, but Ivan shrugged his father away. The irony of Josef telling anyone to be good was not lost on us—our bitterness was palpable, as if steam were coming off our heads. But what could we say?
Beatriz’s parents came to take her away, and she said, “See you later. I love you guys.” She blew us a kiss.
Brickie came out. “Everybody okay?”
/> I said, “Uh-huh. We’re just out here being stoic.”
“Is this a good time to talk about things? Ivan?”
“I don’t care,” he replied.
Sitting down with us, Brickie began, “I think you all need to know what’s going on.” He sounded so official. “The authorities have interviewed all the…persons of interest, and have concluded that Elena died from a severe asthma attack. She had her pills, but not her inhaler, apparently. She’d had a lot to drink, and there were traces of other injurious and unusual substances in her system that they couldn’t identify—possibly other drugs. But it doesn’t appear to have been…homicide.”
Confused, Max asked, “What do you mean, ‘unusual substances’? They thought she might have been poisoned?”
Brickie paused. Then he explained, “Elena consorted—kept company—with some individuals who didn’t have her best interests at heart.”
“I still don’t get it,” I said. “Like who?”
For a minute, Brickie looked away. “I do not know,” he said stiffly, adding, “but, as I say, homicide has been ruled out. And they don’t believe it was suicide, either. Maybe you boys have been worrying about that.”
“Suicide?” I asked. “You mean, like she killed herself?” Why would Elena have done such a thing? I couldn’t imagine anyone thinking Elena, so full of life, would have done that.
“Correct. The prescription bottle in the bag she was carrying still had pills, and if she’d intended to do away with herself, she likely would have taken all of those. She also had a spider bite, and there were traces of a spider-borne toxin in her system.”
At this, my heart began banging in my chest. Brickie was waiting for us to say something, but I knew we were all too afraid to speak.
Brickie continued. “But Josef said she wasn’t allergic to any insects, and the pathologist said that right now, of course, they’re seeing many people with traces of spider toxins in their blood. A bite from a regular spider wouldn’t kill anybody. It just seems to have been a combination of things, and bad luck. If she’d had her inhaler, it might not have happened. I’m truly sorry to tell you all this, Ivan. But I want you to understand. It was just a tragic accident.” I could hear us each exhaling.
I badly wanted Brickie to shut up and go away, but he had more to say. “And I might as well give you all the bad news. Your friend Gellert and his family have to leave the country. Someone determined that they were undesirable aliens, possibly Communist sympathizers posing as refugees, but I’m not convinced of that myself. I think someone had it in for them. But Elena tried her best to make things better for them. I’m sorry about everything, boys.” He rose, brushing off his pants, and patted each of our sweating heads before going inside.
Max and I looked at each other, baffled and amazed. Ivan said softly, “So did I do it?”
Max cried, “You didn’t! You heard him, Ivan! That’s great!”
“She’s still dead, Max.”
Realizing his insensitivity, Max apologized. “I’m an idiot.”
“But, Ivan, you don’t have to feel guilty anymore! You should feel better about that,” I said.
“I guess,” he said dully. “But what about the spider toxins?”
“He said everybody had them!” I practically shouted. “Forget about it, Ivan!”
Brickie’s remark regarding Gellert’s family struck me as summing everything up: Elena tried her best to make things better. Weird for this to be coming from Brickie, who had had reservations about Elena all along, but then I remembered them happily dancing together at the Fiesta. Elena had certainly made things better for Ivan and me. I grieved for myself, but how Ivan was going to get along without her in the world I could not imagine.
15
But get along we had to. In the weeks following Elena’s death, we’d returned to school and resumed those rituals: trudging back and forth to Rosemary, learning long division and practicing multiplication tables and cursive writing in our despised Palmer Method handbooks, eating the thirty-five-cent lunches served up in our smelly cafeteria, playing kickball at recess (and losing without Gellert), doing or pretending to do our homework, and hanging out together before bedtime, which, with fall, had become a very short respite. Ivan was not the same—woebegone and more quiet even than he’d been before.
I received a letter from my mother, condolences about Elena for me, Max, and Ivan but also with the wonderful news that she’d be coming home “for good” very soon. She and my dad seemed to have settled their legal issue, and Dad took me and the boys to a movie. Max and I wanted to see Plan 9 from Outer Space, but Dad thought we should see something funny, so we saw The Shaggy Dog. It was okay—a kid turns into a dog. Ivan said he wished it were him. Liz came home from Holton-Arms one weekend and helped us paint Elena’s swing a shiny, vibrant red, a shade approximating Sports Car. Beatriz painted an angel on the back. We didn’t ask Josef for permission; we just did it.
* * *
—
The Fabulous Family Fiesta had been a success, insofar as Kees and Piet did invite us—Max included—to swim in their pool. We enjoyed a few weeks of fun until it got too cold, and they drained it for the winter. Then Mr. Chappaqua took us, packed like sardines, for a spin in the Messerschmitt. We didn’t give a damn about being traitors. Josephine hired us to rake the leaves in the Pond Lady’s yard, but our enthusiasm for the pond and spiders had cooled, to say the least. Miss Braddock died, and we thought about breaking in to see the dollhouse while it was still there, but our enthusiasm for breaking in had cooled as well.
The world continued being the weirdest place on earth, and the Cold War kept getting hotter. We learned in our Weekly Readers that Khrushchev was visiting the United States and had gotten mad because he wasn’t allowed to go to Disneyland. Brickie told us that Khrushchev said that the mayor of Los Angeles had “tried to let out a little fart, and instead he shit his pants,” which naturally amused us. Eisenhower was going to try to smooth things over by entertaining Khrushchev at Camp David, out in the Catoctin hills, not too far from us.
On an Indian summer afternoon, Ivan and I were riding with Dimma in her Cadillac to the Mann Farm for the annual Democratic picnic. Dimma was going to support John F. Kennedy for president in the upcoming election, because he “has class, and is smart, and he’s wealthy, so he won’t be using the presidency to make money,” but I thought that she really liked him because he was young and handsome and had a glamorous wife who wore French clothes. I didn’t blame her.
As we were traveling out Wisconsin Avenue, suddenly cars were pulling over and people were spilling onto the median. Dimma said excitedly, “Boys! It must be Eisenhower coming back from Camp David!” She pulled over and we joined everyone. Rolling very slowly toward us was a convertible limousine. In the backseat sat two old guys with bald heads: Ike and Nikita.
People were shouting and waving, and then there they were, next to us. We were so close to Khrushchev we could see the warts on his face. Ivan shouted, “Dasvidaniya!” The potato face turned, and he smiled and waved to Ivan.
I yelled, “Khrushchev waved at you!” Ivan beamed, the first happy smile I’d seen from him in forever.
We were so excited and so was Dimma, but I couldn’t understand exactly why—wasn’t this America’s greatest enemy? Returning to the Caddy, Dimma said, “Well, wasn’t that something! I’m so glad you boys got to see them!”
I had a chance to quiz Brickie about the event that evening when we were in the kitchen having an early Bachelor Night. He hated Khrushchev, but admitted that seeing an important figure like that—two important figures—didn’t happen every day. “Whatever he is now, he was an ally and a war hero,” Brickie said, flipping our sizzling burgers. “One day you’ll be telling your grandchildren about it. If he hasn’t blown us up by then.”
“Well, I won’t have children or grandchildren, b
ecause I’m not getting married.”
“Oh, I suspect you’ll change your mind about that.”
“I might have married Elena.” I think that was the first time I’d said her name since she’d died, and it gave me a pang. “But she’s the only one.”
“I can understand your feeling that way. Elena was a lovely woman.” Brickie was quiet for a minute. “She was…a complex person, John.”
“What do you mean?”
“That man who picked her up from your Fiesta? That was Camilo Cienfuegos, a dangerous Cuban revolutionary.”
“So?” Then Elena’s words popped out of my mouth: “Not everyone in Cuba is bad. They’re trying to help poor people there.”
“They’re Communists, John. And Elena helped them. She wasn’t just aiding refugees.”
This stunned me, as if he’d told me that Elena was an alien from Mars. “You mean…she was a spy?”
“Not exactly. She was…an agent of influence, entertaining foreign men who could give significant money to the revolutionary cause. She also entertained American officials who might tell her things—secrets—about our government, which she may then have passed on to people like Camilo Cienfuegos. She was probably going to be arrested before long. But this is America, not Russia, and you can’t just arrest people without probable cause.”
I said, “What do you mean—entertaining? Like at parties?”
“You’ll understand when you’re older.” That again. “And I want you to promise not to tell Ivan any of this. He doesn’t need to know. Or he may know already, poor boy. You need to know because I think you’re old enough to understand that people are not always what they seem. You musn’t be too trusting on the face of things.”
“That’s exactly what Elena told us.” I hated hearing all this, but couldn’t help asking, “What happened to the guy on the motorcycle?”
